I've been reading stuff recently on the interwebs, so it's time to share:

Dead Media Project
An Interview with Bruce Sterling
http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=208

Lots of interesting things said there, Dead Media is basically any media (a message-delivering device) that is no longer used (either because it doesn't work, or whatever). It's really interesting-sounding research from a techno-social point of view.



Star Wars: A New Heap
http://www.canopycanopycanopy.com/4/star_wars__a_new_heap

"The Death Star is an essential work of minimalism, and its destruction is a turning point for modernism."
There. You didn't know that, did you? Star Wars is all wrought with minimalist aesthetic - but also delightfully the sort of 'discrete stage' -aesthetic of Robert Smithson (which basically says "machines are assum" which is what I agree with a lot :D)
So yeah, interesting article, and the zine looks really cleverly done too - though a little wee issue with their layout is that old ladies like me can't read the darn tiny print, and making the text bigger on the browser really fuxx with their system-thingie.


The INS Declaration on Inauthenticity
Also, I've been focusing my commute bus journeys in making sense of that INS declaration. And while it still is full of win, and still is somewhat over my head and can't quite get all of it, I have two new pieces of information to share about it: 1. Silvie should read it. It talks about tragedy a lot. 2. It's a disappointing declaration (disappointment is an emotion). I fight my way through it, reading all these interesting thought-provoking statements in it only to come to the end, which distills into "we want artists to continue to steal" (they point out that art is all about repetition, which I already know though the world is a bit in denial, at least if you haven't been to art school), and then say "art tries to use repetition to create authenticity" (they are against authenticity on this declaration) and then... that's it. The end. The last 5 or so clauses of the declaration are not declaration they are art (it took hours of research on the internet to figure that out). So the last paragraph that is part of the declaration leaves the thought unfinished. Now this is good from a critical thinker -point of view (no easy answers), but from an emotional artist point of view, I wanted these smarter-than-me people to tell me what contemporary art is about and what it should do, what I should do. But no,they leave it open. Damn you James Joyce.

It also showed me holes in my reading, which I intend to fix (well, some of them). I downloaded and printed Rilke's 'Duino Elegies' which I'll struggle though next, and I will also need to tackle 'Finnegan's Wake' - I've avoided it for too long.

An Important Experience

On Saturday I went to London, to the Tate Modern and the Tate Britain. In the Tate Mod I went to see the new part of the Unilever Series in the Turbine Hall, TH.2058 (mentioned in <blog:1061738>) It was kind of a far-fetched huge installation of blue and yellow bunkbeds, humongous sculptures (a giant spider, a giant apple core and some abstract blobs), a video of scenes from scifi movies, and futuristic books on all the bunkbeds. I also spent some time in front of the replica of the Large Glass, and I also hung out for a while in the room with all the Fluxus stuff. I also stumbles by Jonas Mekas's video diary playing in one dark room and sat watching that for a bit, and his view of John and Yoko's Bed-In was on there too, so that was nice to watch (from a non-art/fan point-of-view).

Then I meandered along Southbank over to Tate Brit to listen to the International Necronautical Society (INS)'sJoint Declaration On Inauthenticity. It was nothing that I was expecting, it was very controversial (I found it difficult to accept), but it certainly made an impact. I felt very out of my depth there, and had to find a transcript on the internet today and print it and read it, to understand what they are talking about (I still don't quite understand, but I'm working on it). Basically, the society is approaching death as a space to be explored, charted and, eventually, inhabited. And the question of inauthenticity is... well, I don't know. But in it they describe the necronaut (basically we are all necronauts already). And I feel like they are describing me, things that are lurking at the back of my mind, things that I struggled so hard to express on my MA, things that my lecturer found fascinating in me (he's a sadist and enjoys other people's struggle :P) - but I can't understand this description of me.

But I fully embrace this declaration.

You can look into it a little in http://www.necronauts.net/declarations/inauthenticity_release.html


On a slightly less important note:
Today is supposedly Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year. I've been so happy all day it's unreal. Now fair enough I had a major meltdown on Thursday, and Sunday was wonderful, so obviously I'm all charged up with happy... but I thought it was really pretentious of me to be happy on the most depressing day of the year. I've been grinning like an idiot to myself all day.

An Important Discovery

You may or may not be aware of my 2+ years obsession with 'the right colour'. I became aware of this obsession around the last year of my BA. I knew sort of what I think the right colour is (the antithesis of which is not the wrong colour, but the left colour) but I didn't manage to quite specify it. It was this sort of pale-ish, off-white-ish, yellow-ish colour, the colour of pale skin, light wood, cream, sand, masking tape, tea stains, etc... So it was less of a colour and more of a colour-range. Some of them are more perfect, some less, but they all were to me the right colour.

Today I found out why.

They have calculated the average colour of the universe. That is, taking all the light in the universe and blending it together makes this pale beige colour (crudely called the Cosmic Latte, but we can forget that bit - most colours have really stupid names - in fact the whole idea of naming colours in the first place is debatable, but we are humans and we need to name stuff). But my right colour is the colour of the universe (if someone were to look at it from far away in order to see all the light as one light source). Let me repeat: my right colour is the colour of the universe.

You can read the study here
http://www.pha.jhu.edu/~kgb/cosspec/


In other arty news, this exhibition sounds wonderful
http://www.aldrichart.org/exhibitions/shearer.php
I hope there would be an exhibition view, because I'm imagining it looks amazing in situ (and obviously I can't go to CT to check it out for myself... I wish this exhibition would travel to Europe, too).

Arendt acknowledged her deep affinity with Rahel Varnhagen, née Levin, calling her “my very closest woman friend, unfortunately dead a hundred years now.”
(From the article 'Beware Of Pity' in the New Yorker)

Finally, words to describe my relationship to Harpo <3



Another lovely bit in the article:
The lesson that Arendt drew was that a beautiful soul is not enough, for “it was precisely the soul for which life showed no consideration.” To live fully and securely, every human being needs what Arendt calls “specificity,” the social and political status that comes with full membership in a community.


Nudder one:
“One truth that is unfamiliar to the Jewish people, though they are beginning to learn it, is that you can only defend yourself as the person you are attacked as. A person attacked as a Jew cannot defend himself as an Englishman or Frenchman. The world would only conclude that he is simply not defending himself.”

There's a futuristic short-story-writing contest in regards to an exhibition in the Tate Modern. Have a look if you like to write stuff. :)

http://blog.tate.org.uk/unilever2008/

*edit*
My entry:

Fifty Years Ago.

Every so often humanity looks back to the past to see how different life was when their grandparents were young.

Fifty years ago people had more time for themselves, they had less confusing choices to make in their lives, they considered family to be important. Fifty years ago the world was a real place to be in, and society was something you belonged in. There was much variety between people of different areas, so that all of humanity had a richer culture as a result.

Fifty years ago technology was simple and unintrusive. You didn't need to constantly be connected to everyone else - you had a choice. You could switch your phone off, you could log out. And you could talk face to face, and even send letters and postcards and parcels; that is, pieces of physical information that would take a couple days to travel through space, carried by people employed to carry this physical mail to people's places of residence.

Fifty years ago it was common for more than one person to live in the same address.

Fifty years ago a normal commute to work took much longer than three minutes, and intercontinental travel lasted for hours and hours.

Fifty years ago some things were safe and innocent. The worst things criminals could do to you on the street was kill or rape you. Nobody could attack your mind or identity. Nobody could steal your soul.

Fifty years ago health and medicine was incredibly infantile: It was possible to catch a life-threatening disease just by having sex. Also energy-giving medicine like Ecstacy was illegal, yet habit-forming drugs like Lunesta, Halcion or Sonata, which make you mellow and drowsy, were considered medicinal. In fact relaxation was not just for society's outcasts and drop-outs; you weren't expected to be always wired up and alert and active to be considered a decent person, a respectable member of society. It was okay to relax sometimes.

Bob's Diner

I'm testing a new feature. You can has ignores.

I have this theory, or thought, about television, as a medium. For a while now I have thought that TV still does things that other media do better, and that it's about time for TV to et a grip. Mainly my gripe is TV series with long overarching plots, things like Battlestar Galactica, Gilmore Girls, Lost etc... I hate cliffhangers, and I find those kinds of programmes best when consumed in excess: several episodes in a row, just one after another. That's how I like my GG and BSG especially. So I think those kind of programmes are best served on DVD. TV is good at things that are always the same but with a slight twist: sitcoms (you don't need to know what happened before to get the hang of Friends or Simpsons, and they always stick to a kind of system or formula that makes it what it is and it works); also things that you'd want to watch once and only today, like news, current affairs programmes or talk shows. TV is good at making things snappy, and while the Internet is better at give-it-me-nao, TV is still better quality in image and sound etc broadcasting (internet is for narrowcasting). So while neither the internet nor DVD (or papers or radio or whatever) replaces TV, there are things they could collaborate on. The Internet is mimicking both TV and print media, and that's not what the web is best at (internet is king of audience participation, or even breaking down the barrier between audience and author). But we're getting there with YouTube and Wikipedia and all the rest of it. Also TV is taking some pages from DVD's and Internet's book through TV-on-demand -things.
But I digress. The point was, I thought "BSG is better served on DVD" end of.

But.
A couple days ago I realised what it is that TV does that DVD doesn't. Sharing. Being able to meet your friends or coworkers the next day and go "amg, did you see what happened in *show* last night, I was about to go bonkers when I saw that!" - Sharing the experience. Everybody watching the same thing, sharing the experience, at the same time in a same kind of setting (home most likely), and being able to talk about it later. DVD doesn't give that kind of community feel to the programme. When I obsessively watch my sister's Gilmore Girls DVDs all night long, it's all mine. I am the long-lost Gilmore Girl and nobody has ever understood these characters like I do. It's all mine it's about possession. And when my sister occasionally joins me, it doesn't really have that shary feel with it, because she comes in cold "which episode you at, is it after the wedding or before?" and she hasn't just experienced the excruciating break-up between Lane and Zach. She knows they're going to get back together, she knows what's coming because she's watched and owned the whole thing many times before I have. No sharing, no community. And that's something that TV has value in: though you are not physically in the same location, you are mentally in the same place: in Stars Hollow, on the Island, aboard Galactica. At the same time. There's value in that.

So now I have to re-evaluate what is the best way to serve BSG.

End of line.

* * *

Next week on iippo's diary: Miracles. I figured out what they are, when and why and how.

iippo's version of
'The Movie Game'
1. Pick 16 of your Favourite Movies.
2. Go to IMDB and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everybody to guess.
4. Strike it out when somebody guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.
5. No Cheating! (No google, or IMDB to help!)


01. Well, art is art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west, and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce, they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.
02. Which one of you fine gentlemen would like to join our team? The Dark Knight. [windowframe]
03. Hello. We're teachers on sabbatical and we've just won the lottery. Quantum of Solace. [Linderel] and [windowframe] 
04. Give it up old man, you can't fight evolution, I was built for speed!
05. You mean she would rather imagine herself relating to an absent person than build relationships with those around her?
06. I'm gettin' kinda fond of you, kid. Not that I wanna pick out curtains or anything. Aladdin. [Teufelsweib]
07. No, I don't think he likes you at all. No, I don't like you either. Star Wars. [Mortified Penguin]
08. I hit him in the head with a frying pan and put him in the trunk... so he wouldn't get hurt. Who Framed Roger Rabbit. [Draugluin]
09. I am not third world ugly, women think I'm cute. Rush Hour 2. [sequeena_rae]
10. {introducing Carol to Simon} Carol the waitress, Simon the fag. As Good As It Gets. [Mordigen]
11. When I die and I stand before God awaiting judgment and he asks me why I let one of HIS miracles die, what am I gonna say, that it was my job? The Green Mile. [Teufelsweib]
12. We'll get a sign: "No Spiders or Visigoths Allowed."
13. When you're born in the gutter you end up in the port. (Viking is not allowed to answer this one)
14. The farmers have won. We have lost.
15. I haven't got time for this Mickey Mouse bullshit.
16. Professor Marvel never guesses. He knows!

Two things.

One.
I drove somewhere with a music buff friend, and in his car we listened to a mixed CD (he is the master of the mixed CD) and I heard a song I kinda liked, so I asked him to email it to me. He said he'd rather burn it onto a CD for me, as he's had troubles attaching mp3s to emails. I said I don't want just one song on a CD, so he suggested I pick some others and he'll make a CD with more than one song. I tried to figure out what songs that would have in it. And then it hit me: I asked him to make me a mixed CD of anything whatsoever (and he is the only music buff that I know that is completely unprejudiced against any genre. He listens to everything - he may not like everything, he still has taste - he doesn't diss anything). He liked the idea, but asked for a theme, because free reign would be way too mind-bogglingly hard, so I came up with a theme: experimental. We talked about the theme a little bit and he got it: songs that did something that no one else had done before, songs that paved the way for the future generations, songs that sound like nothing else, etc... And he got pretty excited about it, and the next day he gave me two mixed CDs he labeled "History of Pop" and said volumes 3 and 4 were to follow! :D He is so awesome. So I've had my musical horizon slowly broadened by all these amazing songs on my new Quad. I'm probably going to do some kind of big exploratory wiki-thingie of it at a later date (when I have more time).

Two.
I went to see a film called "Waltz With Bashir". It's an animated documentary about a man who fought in the Israeli-Lebanese war in '83, and he can't remember anything of it, and he is trying to bring back his memories of the event, and the film follows him piecing together the events, talking to people he knows were there with him. What a film. What a story. It scarred me for life, in a good way. Its impact on me was much alike the impact the manga Son of Hiroshima had on me, and in a milder scale Maus did. There is something about the drawn that communicates to me better. Gets through my defenses and desensitisation and hits me where it hurts. But I've said it before, it's the important kind of pain, the kind that makes you see and know. I can't quite define it yet. A review might follow (I wrote it already, I just need to type it some day. No time for ET anymore).


^{The song was White Lines by Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel. That's right. iippo wanted a rap-song.}

I don't know if you are aware or I've told you before, but Coventry (where I live in England) is a city that is keen on peace and reconciliation (mainly because it was bombed flat in WWII). Something I said in a conversation in a wiki reminded me to tell you the following. In the 60s, John Lennon and Yoko Ono did a bunch of art projects where they planted acorns of peace, that would grow into oaks and people could find solace and comfort in the oaks, etc... Long term project, right? They did that outside the Coventry cathedral. And what did Coventry do? Dig out the acorns and steal them >.<;;;; And today I was thinking that the following statement applies: it would be cooler to have an acorn from an oak planted by John and Yoko, than an acorn planted by John and Yoko. >.< It would be great if people that come to Coventry could actually get an acorn that grew in the tree that the Ono-Lennons planted as a token of peace.

End of line.

Bold if you've done it
Italics if you want to do it

1. Started your own blog (lasted about three days)
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity (I cancelled the direct debit three months later :C)
7. Been to Disneyland (Disneyworld)
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo (and botched it up XD)
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch (pretty much, even though I went to art school too)
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning (twice - it was a roommate on both times)
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables (my family does, that counts because you can be singular or plural)
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort (sounds cooler than is, probably. This is just something you do in Finland)
25. Held a lamb (I hae held a piggy, though. Stinkier and not as soft)
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice (oddly enough, we didn't do this bit when we went to Venice...)
29. Seen a total eclipse (vague recollection)
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run (I used to be darn good at Finnish baseball)
32. Been on a cruise (again, just something you do in Finland)
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors (This is actually quite high on my want-to-do -list, as I'm doing my family history)
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language (tried several times - does that count? :P)
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo's David (I've seen a replica...)
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant (I'd also want to be a stranger... :3)
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling (I think I need to want to do this, because someone I like is a diver...)
52. Kissed in the rain (lets not talk about it)
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater (So far, this is the thing I want most on this list)
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class (Tai chi - was great for the back)
59. Visited Russia (As slightly as possible, just a wee bit over the border... Didn't do it justice, didn't like it. I'll have to retry this some day)
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got/gave flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma (Speaking of whih, where's my blood donor card? It should have arrived by now... Damn...)
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi concentration camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy (saved from what?)
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten caviar (My grandma really liked it, so I'll have to gie it a try some day)
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone (Technically, the doctor broke it, now me...)
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem (I want Jerusalem syndrome :P)
84. Had your picture in the newspaper (Something pointless and school related, nothing exciting like "local woman saves drowning idiot")
85. Read the entire Bible (Grr, second time I'e been asked this and forced to say no. I really need to get that done)
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating (Hmm, we once prepared half a slaughtered pig for eating - but we didn't kill it ourselves...)
88. Had chickenpox (I thought everyone has o.O)
89. Saved someone’s life (Possibly, how can you know?)
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous (I'm not saying I want to meet anyone who is famous, but I would like to meet certain famous people)
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake (Well I should do a trip to Utah at some point probably...)
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone (...what? Who hasn't?)
99. Been stung by a bee (a wasp counts because the bastards are worse than bees: they don't even die from stinging you, so you don't even get that little bit of satisfaction >.<)
100. Read an entire book in one day (Harry Potter always took too long a wait...)

Sharing time. If you care, this is for you. If you don't, sorry. There will be a YouTube video at the end.

More excuses for online absence: I start on Monday. :) I has job. That pays real money. That requires me to commute. I'm silly like that, I've always wanted a job or school or something that would require me to sit in a bus for a long time every day. I think bus-routine sounds cool, traveling on a bus... head-space... Y'know. I'll probably learn to not like it after a while, but hey ho. I like it now. The job is computer-ey (data entry) and not arty, but that's ok. It comes with lots of very good (or bad, depending on your point of view) personal reasons why I want to work there *coughcoughRaycoughcoughcough* - sorry, I have a cold (which I'm self-medicating with Lovehearts :p)



Sorry, no YouTube video. You were conned.

I'm ill. Therefore I have the right to be a bit absent lately - right?

Also, what the hack is up with this redirect?! -> Rule 34

Heh.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/eamon-mccann/eamonn-mccann-what-if-mormons-are-right-and-catholics-and-protestants-wrong-13955402.html

The thing that really surprised me about this article is that the author isn't a member of the church. And that it's actually on a real newspaper (or at least its website). And that it's not totally bashing the mormons. o.O Huh.

He's surprisingly well-informed about the basics of the idea (I didn't know baptism for the dead was argued over and rejected in Synods), though he does skip the bit about freedom to choose: we believe that even those who are dead still get to choose whether they want the baptism to have aneffect or not (we're not forcing anyone to heaven, here o.O) and that the performance of the baptism - whether the person is alive or dead - alone is not enough to get you anywhere, we think it's a far more active thing, you actually need to want salvation and show that willingness in the stuff you do. But baptism is the necessary first step, and we want all people, living and dead, to be given that choice in the first place. We want everyone to be in a position where they can say "no thank you" or "yes please". And that's why we are baptised for the dead, that's why we serve missions and knock on people's doors.

There is one thing that the work makes me worry about though (besides the fact that there are mind-bogglingly many dead people and therefore this is a hugenormous undertaking), and that is the people we don't find. As it suggests in the article, we find the dead people from parish records etc... (the ideal situation is that everyone does the work for their own ancestors - that way you get to know a bit about them before you all meet up again in there - but there is also work straight from parish records through 'extractions of names'). But what about people who lived before such records were kept? :/ Censuses go back only so far (there's a reason they call the Medieval times 'the Dark Ages' - and it's not because the sun didn't rise as much). The only answer for myself that I have at the moment is that Jesus will somehow sort it out when he gets back (apparently there will be a lot of baptisms for the dead and other temple work in the Millenium). But I still sometimes worry about that.

* * *

Top 10 Places Thar I Think Would Be Awesomest To Go On My Mission

10. Alaska.
I keep mentioning it jokingly when people ask where I reckon I'll be sent... It'll freak me out a little if it actually happens.
9. Finland.
Home... I'd be a wee bit gutted, but it'd be kinda awesome since it's the country, it's the land, my roots and all that jazz. They often send missionaries to where their ancesters are from, plus I already know the language.
8. England.
My other home. Would also be a bit meh to miss the travel opportunity, but then again loads of people I love live here...
7. A place I can't even begin to imagine.
It'd be sorta awesome to be sent somewhere that I can't even imagine ever going to. Like... heck, I can't even think of an example! :P
6. Georgia, US.
Home of [Aradon Templar] and my awesome singer-friend who is convinced I'll be sent there to her. If I was sent there, I'd insist Tempie to come meet me (though sadly I wouldn't be able to hug him :/)
5. Indiana, US.
Home of [Viking]. I like the sound of Indy a bit better than Georgia (temperature-wise) but I wouldn't be allowed to hug him either. :/
4. Argentina.
Home of [All_Most PUNK] - also, they are building a new temple there, so that's always exciting. Temperature and no-huggage-of-PUNK don't appeal, but it would require the learning of a new language, which would be awesome.
3. Belgium.
Home of [ally]. New language, and I would be able to hug her, yay!
2. Brazil.
The home of my best friend evar, Tibo. Bit too tropical for me, but would include a new language. But it's also a scary place from what I've heard her say...

1. Scotland.
My best church-friend evar is serving her mission in Scotland right now. I can't begin to imagine how totally awesome it would be to serve in the same area. We'd be a nightmare if we were a comapnionship! XD Amg, I just imagined what'd be ike if she were my trainer! XD XD Sadly, couldn't write to her while in different areas, though, we're not allowed to write to missionaries within the same mission... But still. Would be the awesomest place evar, so funny. Like, I'd follow in her footstepas, literally. :P

I'm randoming in XKCD, because, you see the thing is, yeah that's why.

And I want to live in xkcd world:

http://xkcd.com/150/
http://xkcd.com/462/
http://xkcd.com/96/
http://xkcd.com/249/
http://xkcd.com/227/ (the hover to this one makes me cry tears of joy :P)
http://xkcd.com/171/
http://xkcd.com/340/
http://xkcd.com/343/
http://xkcd.com/45/ (hover r00ls again)
http://xkcd.com/144/
http://xkcd.com/140/ (amg, life... explained...)
http://xkcd.com/162/
http://xkcd.com/165/

Ok I'll stop now. *sigh*

Ever so often I check Post Secret (I forget a lot - someone help me remember!)
But I did today. And this one had serious aww-factor:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_a7jkcMVp5Vg/SRY6sc4rlaI/AAAAAAAAHRI/z5R082-cANw/s1600-h/laughlines.jpg

Interestingly, today before my job interview I was waiting and I was given a newspaper to read, the Guardian. And there was a little article/comment by Joan Bakewell who writes the column Just 70, and has recently been appointed the Voice of the Older People by the government, and I think she is assum. Oldness. I can't wait for it.
Actually, here is the text: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/10/ageism-joan-bakewell-voice-of-older-people-pensions

One day I thought of a really good secret to send, but I can't remember it anymore. It may have been the "I don't like it when people like me, but I like it when people just sort of tolerate me" -thing (I worded it much better) but I'm not sure. But yes, if you didn't know that about me, then now you do.

As a result of last Sunday, when exciting things happened, and I got to spend a fair bit of time with someone I'd like to spend quite a bit more time with, I had an inspiration of sorts - which in turn led to this:

http://writersco.com/207.Human-People.15%20Minutes%20Early

Now because everything happened so suddenly, I haven't yet read that thing enough many times to think that it sucks and therefore shall never see the light of day - and therefore it sees the light of day and people are welcome to read it. Feel free to take advantage of this rare occasion of new iippo-writing being presented to the public (and feel free to be as harsh as you want in critiquing it. After all I'm an adult and can handle it).

This concludes the business.

Punk 'N Roll
I have this compilation CD of classic Finnish punk, and I finally got off my arse and ripped it in order to share it with Viking and Punk (rest of yous are welcome to it too).
My favourites are 10 (Apulanta: Aurinkoon) and 16 (Lehtivihreät: Tunne Tietää). And 3 (Ne Luumäet: Onnellinen Perhe), 5 (James Puhto-Ren: Helsinkiin vai Helvettiin), and 13 (Luonteri Surf: 30 Vuotta) are awesome too. Rest of it isn't bad either, there's a couple really HC ones that I'm not so keen on, Klamydia's songs are mostly funny (so that doesn't work for me at all times either, sometimes it's good), and one particularly depressing one where the lyrics are very good - just very very depressing :P Oh, and Pelle Miljoona is from my home town, woot. Not that I was even alive when he was around (he's not dead yet, just famous), but still.
If you want translations, says so.


Oh, RapidShare said it can be downloaded 10 times only. So if it doesn't work, you might try to be number 11. I dunno, should be fine, I can't imagine most of you being interested in Finnish punk. I'm only sharing it with Viking and Punk as a curio.
http://rapidshare.com/files/161508191/Punk_n_Roll.zip.html

Samuel Beckett's Not I
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=otjKETciw2c
What a powerful... thing. o.O Watch it.

http://marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/newsmap.cfm
The newsmap. What a fantastic thing. I hope all news in the future will be delivered in this format.

NumberPedia is still relevant to my interests.


Thank you.

24 Hour Psycho review. I'd waited for this for yonks, and it came and it went - slowly. This was probably the highlight of my year so far (but then again both my birthday and Christmas are still to come, and I can't remember anything beyond three weeks ago...) So yeah, it was awesome!

and yes, I'm trying out this review thingie. It's nifty, and I think so because I have lots of opinions I want to impose on share with other people :3

But, as my diary is kinda more private than a review, I'll tell you all how that went:
I got the bus to Brum (and someone I know from uni happened to be on the same bus so I sat with him and chatted til he got off - and I never get to just sit down and chat with him <3), I got lost on the way to the gallery (not a wholesome activity in Birmingham city centre on a Friday night after dark on Halloween!) but got there in the end half an hour late (standard mormon time). My teacher George was there and one of the new MA students, talked with them for a while, checked the work, and George bought me soup, because I am that broke. They left, I stayed. And stayed and stayed. I saw a lot of really slow driving, a lot of really slow conversations (without sound), a car sinking into a swamp (slowly, but I think that might have actually been real time swamp-sinkage; I'd imagine they'd fast forward it a bit for the real movie), and one really slow murder. For a lot of the time there was no other visitors there, and the gallery staff were chatting to me because they were a bit bored. They also gave me free soup and hot chocolate :9 I was really freezing there. And I fell asleep a few times <_< At around 1pm the next day I said "ok, I have now experienced enough of the 24 Hour Psycho, and will now go home." I got out of the gallery, and the gallery assistant asked for my contact details because I had stayed for such a long time :P And she told me that the Bullring in town had been evacuated (in case that'd affect my traveling). I thought it wouldn't but it did - the bus was really late, I waited for about an hour and a half for a bus that goes every half an hour >.< Cold. And no familiar faces on the bus either.
I am very tired, but happy.